When Jordan opened the door, she was hit by a waft of something delicious and instantly started salivating.

    “This is a really quick visit, so sorry for popping by without notice.” Sylvia gushed hurriedly. “There was a sale on chicken and I went overboard with making fried chicken. I have a lot leftover and I have no hopes of finishing it on my own. Would you like some?”

    “Um-I-” Jordan stammered, her eyes fixated on the plate in Sylvia's hands. She wiped the back of her hand against , just to make sure she wasn’t drooling. The chicken was a golden brown, wafting savory steam into the frosty air. “I’d love some.” Sylvia instantly plopped the plate in Jordan’s hands with a smile.

    “Excellent. You need to put some meat on those bones anyways.”

    A weight settled on Jordan’s shoulder, causing both her and Sylvia to glance behind them. Jordan widened her eyes at Chen, who must have been attracted by the smell of the food. He sent a curly smile at the old woman in the doorway before directing his attention towards the chicken.

    Sylvia’s eyes crinkled at the corners with a sneaky smirk.

    “I seem to keep interrupting you two.” She turned to walk down the front steps, but not before sending Jordan a surreptitious wink. “I’ll leave you two alone now. Enjoy that!” Jordan wasn’t sure if she was talking about the chicken or the deadweight on her shoulder. She was going to force herself to believe the former, even if she knew that it wasn’t true. She glanced back at Chen, and saw the reason for Sylvia’s hasty retreat.

    Chen wasn’t wearing clothes. Again. Jordan smacked her forehead into the doorframe. She had to remind herself that while she was now oddly used to Chen walking around half-, that did not mean everyone else was.  

    Jordan groaned at the boxer-clad figure who sent her an odd look. She needed to get him into the habit of wearing clothes.

    Explaining to him the reason for clothes though, that was the difficult part. Clothes were a social norm. For him, not wearing clothes was perfectly normal. He seemed to have a sense of "decency" in the sense that he was willing to wear boxers, but that was about it. To be honest, Jordan would be perfectly fine with not ever having to wear clothes - ignoring the fact that her scars would have prevented that from actually happening. Clothes were expensive, wasted water, tended to be unethical, and frankly weren’t all that helpful towards society. Jordan glanced back at Chen’s bare form with a sigh.

    “Dinner, Chen.” She lifted the plate and headed towards the kitchen. She glanced at the platter. It had about a dozen pieces. Jordan seriously questioned the old lady’s sanity and why she bought that much chicken if she was living on her own. She wasn’t complaining though, it was that much more that could feed Chen. It wasn’t enough, of course, but it would satisfy him a little. Maybe she could hold off a bit on the chicken nuggets.

    After a few minutes however, it was evident that the real challenge was making sure the fried chicken lasted until dinner time.

    Keeping the fried chicken away from Chen was like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. Nearly impossible. He kept darting around using his heightened speed to try and steal the plate. Jordan had good enough reflexes where she could snatch the plate milliseconds before his hands grasped the porcelain and dragged it from his needy fingers. Finally, when she placed the dish in the oven and stood in front of it, his chin tilted down, lips put out in a pout. He looked through his eyelashes at Jordan in most likely the world’s most dangerous puppy-eyes ever. Jordan tried not to get into those glittering, begging eyes, but something in them prevented her from dragging her gaze away. It took all of her willpower to tear her eyes away and move the plate, causing a whine to slip out of the werewolf. This didn’t prevent his attempts, though. But after a while, he just kept speeding up, until in the end all Jordan could do was snatch two pieces for herself and let Chen have at it.

    He immediately pulled out a chair at the table and chowed down.

    Jordan’s attempt at vegetables was to put it nicely, unsuccessful. The oddly faded-looking brussel sprouts were a bit of a mushy pile on the plate. That fact didn’t escape Chen, who sneakily avoided the dish. It didn't escape Jordan’s notice however, and she pushed a few onto his plate.

    She very pointedly ignored the bitter look that was sent her way. Jordan only rolled her eyes when the corners of Chen’s mouth tugged downwards in an uncharacteristic frown, and he wiggled his shoulders in a manner reminiscent of a child.

    “Chen.” She warned, raising an eyebrow at him. She couldn’t help the flare of annoyance when his lips pushed out into a pout. She glared at him.

    “Waeeeeeeeeeeee.” Jordan whipped her head towards the voice, eyes wide. Chen simple stared back, before opening his mouth again. “Waaeeee.” It was high pitched and undulating. Even through her amazement, she could feel the sound grating on her nerves.

    It was the first vocalization he’d done without any prompting from her. And of course it was to whine. He was such a baby.

    Once she’d recovered from her shock, Jordan just glared at Chen until he lowered his head in submission, picking at the limp vegetables on his plate. He reluctantly popped one in his mouth before chewing. He grimaced at the taste. Jordan didn’t care, so long as he ate it.

    After dinner was quiet. Jordan taught Chen to wash the dishes. It took a few minutes; he got distracted by the shiny dish soap bubbles at first. Once the bubbles began to die down, his interest faded and Jordan managed to get him to focus enough to scrub at the dishes. She had him wash while she rinsed everything and placed them in the drying rack. His initial bratty spell from earlier had subsided, and was taking the direction well. He was even willing to rewash something if she pointed out a spot he missed.

    Afterwards, both Chen and Jordan were too exhausted to do much but head upstairs and sleep again. Chen, Jordan assumed, was still tired from his full moon transformation. Jordan was still wary of her nightmares, exhaustion was a constant companion. In addition, her small stint of social interaction in the grocery store had drained her of all her energy. She happily curled under the covers, still a little nervous of the other weight on the other side of the mattress.

    After a few minutes, however, she managed to find Chen’s soft breaths soothing, and fell asleep to their gentle rhythm.

In the beginning, Jordan was a little leery about living with another person, but she never thought she would get used to it. It hadn’t taken much time, only a few days.

    Living with Chen was surprisingly easy, nothing like she originally expected. Of course, other than the full moon trip, he had yet to actually leave the house. Despite the lack of space, he did not wreak the havoc that she expected. He didn’t smash dishes or destroy the furniture, which ripped apart more of Jordan’s preset assumptions. He did nearly break the television, but that was because he was still set on finding the people in the screen. Jordan was willing to overlook that. It wasn’t as if she watched much television anyways.

Though Jordan from the beginning had been a proponent for Variant rights, she began to realized just how prejudiced she was. In her head, though she always knew that variants were extremely intelligent, and in general, more advanced than humans were, there was always that quiet mutter in the back of her head that they were uncivilized, that they were still barbaric in the way they lived.

But seeing the way that Chen always pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and chomped down on his chicken nuggets in the same way as someone would eat normally - though at an exponentially faster pace - his culture showed. And it was very similar to hers.

Jordan wondered what life was like for werewolves. Jordan had only gotten a small taste of it when they were in the second stage of the experiment, but that was just her and Chen on their own. She figured out in the first stage that sharing seemed to be a vital part of werewolf culture, but she still wasn’t sure of the specific significance. She had never met any other werewolves, or had any idea of how they lived. She couldn’t help but feel guilty.

Chen was learning so much about humans, about her and her way of life. But he and everything about him was still an enigma. Small things were interesting, like how he never had to brush his teeth and still had commercial-level white teeth. The big things were confusing too, things that Jordan couldn’t find out even when hacking through research databases. His enhanced physical speed, temperature, senses. Nothing made sense.

She did learn some things about him, though. They were little things, but Jordan was proud that she knew them. She learned that he really wasn't very picky with his food, that he liked soft blankets, that he was very physically affectionate. He preferred poultry and tolerated tofu. He really liked broccoli and garlic but would probably murder to get away from brussel sprouts. After the instance where he nearly scared her out of her skin in the laundry room, he didn’t seem to enjoy scaring her anymore. Nowadays, he made an effort to shift his weight and creak the floorboards when he entered the same room. If there was carpet, he’d tap lightly on the wall. The more things Jordan learned about Chen, the more comfortable she became.

Over the next week they established a routine. Chen and Jordan woke up at approximately the same time. Sometimes Jordan would wake first, casually looking over at Chen before getting ready for the day. Other times, Chen would be up and out of bed before her, and she’d wake to an empty mattress. She usually found him curiously looking over the television or her laptop or the kitchen appliances. Someday, she was going to figure out a way to explain everything to him.

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Chen always hovered around whenever she cooked. His clinginess was a constant. One day, he decided to rest his chin on Jordan’s shoulder as she puttered around the kitchen. At first, she didn't mind it; she actually found it kind of cute, the way he snuffled at the new scents and occasionally bumped his nose into the side of her neck. But after a few minutes, it started getting annoying because she had to move around. The gentle bumps to her neck became sharp thunks of his cheekbone or chin on her shoulder. After a while, she could no longer bear it and employed him to gather ingredients to keep him occupied. Jordan thought it was a good way for him to learn more vocabulary.

After Jordan taught Chen how to wash the dishes, it became his task after every meal. In Jordan’s opinion, it was only fair. If she cooked, he needed to help clean. Chen never complained, his ever-present kitten grin never left his face. He liked when Jordan played music on her phone while he did the dishes, and she often could hear him sing or hum along to the songs he liked. The little mountain of rainbow bubbles at the beginning of the chore probably didn’t hurt in keeping his spirits up either. Afterwards, the two usually just lazed around, still mildly drowsy.  

After lunch, afternoons were quiet. Sometimes, Jordan would teach Chen more words. She was beginning to teach him who, what, where, when, and why. They were more difficult to teach, but so far he’d gotten the hang of who and what. When Chen didn't feel like learning anything, he'd wander off to some part of the house beyond Jordan’s view, doing who knows what. At that point, Jordan would pull out the laptop and wreak havoc upon the YG servers again.

Dinner was usually the only interruption. Every time, Jordan was amused for different reasons. One time, Chen hogged the bag of chicken nuggets; he didn't understand that he had to give them to her if he wanted to eat them. He'd already made the mistake of trying to crunch down on a frozen one. He'd whined over the state of his teeth for a good few minutes afterwards. Another time, she'd tried to force feed him prepackaged seaweed salad she’d found, despite the fact that he did everything in his power to keep his mouth shut. Once Jordan finally managed to get him to try it, he froze in his seat, chewed, glanced at Jordan, and meekly let her feed him half of the small dish with a sheepish smile. Jordan rolled her eyes. She knew he'd like it, she knew his taste.

Of course, he wasn't using everything in his power. Jordan was alive, after all. Jordan could still wrestle him around in his chair like a mother trying to feed her baby. He controlled all of his movements around her, even if he wasn't aware of it.

Jordan didn’t know when it happened. She didn’t know when it became habit for Chen to join her in her bed every night. She didn’t know when Chen stopped going to where he usually went to sleep, and began occupying the other side of her mattress. Jordan no longer ascended the staircase alone. Chen watched the television with fascination as Jordan fiddled around on her laptop. When she closed the laptop with a sigh, Chen would reach for the remote and turn off the television like Jordan had taught him, and head up the stairs.

She never woke up filled with terror with sweat sending a chill through her skin. She now woke to sunlight filtering through the curtains, falling the cream-colored carpet. She always turned to look for Chen, if he was up. Sometimes they faced away from each other, backs just barely touching. Sometimes they weren't touching at all, on the opposite sides of the mattress. And on rare occasions, Jordan would find herself wrapped up in his embrace, sweat soaking into the sheets for entirely different reasons than before. The physicality of every morning changed, but every time, he was there.

    Jordan noticed, that she wasn’t just getting used to Chen. She was beginning to like his presence, his steady weight at the other end of the mattress, their wordless bickering over the dinner table, and the long periods of time filled with comfortable silence.

It was the same on this particular morning when Jordan woke up. On the far end of the bed, she could see Chen’s back, the planes of his back gently rising and falling with his breaths.

But something was different about this morning. Jordan had stolen the comforter as usual, but even then she wasn’t completely warm. The light that filtered through the curtains was not the gentle yellow of the sun just making its appearance for the day. It was brighter and lighter, almost as if the sun was reflecting off of something.

With a groan, Jordan yanked herself from the shallow warmth of the comforter, shivering at the goosebumps that immediately rose on her skin. The air was colder than before, nipping at the exposed skin on her arms and legs. Chen mumbled indignantly at the shift of the mattress, raising his head to look at her. Jordan paid him little  mind, and walked towards the window.

Her breath caught in her chest as she gazed at the world outside. The sun shone bright in a cold blue sky, casting feathery shadows over a crystal-encrusted ground. Light scattered as it hit the small flakes that rose into the air with the slightest disturbance, sending miniscule prisms of rainbow colors in all directions. Snow coated the pine needles and boughs, glittering in the sunshine. Jordan examined the yard, covered in several inches of pristine white.

    Jordan turned at the shuffling of bed sheets. Chen was awake, and judging from the beaming smile on his face, he was beyond excited. His lips were stretched in an “O” of awe as he moved towards the window, his hands pressing up against the glass. His awed expression quickly shifted into one of pure delight as he went to sprint out of the room. Panicking, Jordan grabbed his arm and dragged him with all of her strength towards the wardrobe. No way in hell he was going to dive into the snow with only boxers on.

    Trying to hold onto an excitable Chen was like holding onto wet soap, full of flailing movements and curse words. But after much struggling, Jordan finally managed to wrangle a hoodie over Chen’s head and convinced him to put some sweatpants on. Moving to grab a pair of socks, Jordan turned around to find the werewolf was already long gone. Sighing, Jordan gave up and set the socks down on the comforter. She gathered her coat and gloves before slowly crawling down the stairs. She just remembered why she was never a morning person.

    She found Chen struggling with the lock on the door. She was surprised that he hadn’t simply charged straight through it, knowing his heightened strength. She appreciated that he seemed to know that it would irritate her and refrained. With a quick flick of her fingers, she unlocked the door and Chen went barreling through with a exhilarated cry.

    He dove face-first into a tall snowbank, emerging with a veritable halo of snow-covered hair floating around his face. Jordan couldn’t contain her laughter, gazing at the goofy smile that emanated from his face, or the high-pitched laughter that was sending warm molten gold through her veins.

    It was a lovely sound, his carefree laughter. Jordan reached down to grab for a handful of snow, carefully molding it into a ball. Carefully, while Chen was distracted with rolling around in the snow, she took aim, and fired. She had good fortune and a rare case of accurate aim; Chen looked up right as Jordan threw the snowball, and took the frosty present straight to the face. He spat snow out indignantly, gazing at Jordan with a look of complete and utter betrayal.

    Jordan snickered at him, one palm partially covering her face. Her small chuckles morphed into full blown shrieks when Chen came bounding towards her, snowballs ready in his hands.

    Chen, it seemed, was into fair play, because he did not spare Jordan in their snowball fight. Though Jordan soon had snowflakes down her coat and in her shoes, she didn’t feel the cold. The lightness in her heart emanated from the inside out, keeping her warm. She chased after Chen, chucking snowballs at him equally mercilessly. Their front yard was filled with the rings of their laughter and screaming.

    Jordan paused to take a breather and took in her surroundings. The formerly pristine front lawn was now full of footsteps and disturbed snow drifts. The house had taken many hits; parts of the bricks were encrusted with snow. But it wasn’t only the physical that was different. Jordan couldn’t keep her smile off of her face, couldn’t contain the lack of weight in her chest. She had never felt so content, so buoyant, and watching Chen throw snow over his head with his radiant smile only tugged the corners of even higher.

    Chen gamboled around in the snow, grinning widely as the shimmering flakes floated down. There was a light in his eyes, one Jordan had not seen since they were back in the forest. It was beautiful, something that Jordan hadn’t realized that she’d missed. As she gazed at the way he chuckled at the snowflakes that landed on his nose, and how he rolled around in the snow without a care in the world, and glanced hopefully at her as if asking for her to join in on the fun, Jordan realized that she and Chen had, in this journey, somehow become friends.

    It was a thought that warmed her heart, as she bent down to pack together another snowball. Chen had placed his trust in her, and she was not going to throw it away. He was rolling around in the snow again, and Jordan took careful aim.

    Perfect. The snow went straight down his neck. Jordan squealed as Chen leaped to his feet and tackled her into another snow bank. The two toppled over with a fit of laughter.

    Right now, life wasn’t so bad. Jordan was going to make sure it stayed that way, for both her and Chen.

***

As usual, a great big hug and thank you to Shooka24 for being a glorious beta.

Special Shoutouts to: Cellywelly, Korekrypta, and iamawarrior for upvoting! Thanks so much guys, it means a lot to me!

Because school has started up again, my updates will be more sporadic, but they're still coming, don't worry!

As usual, please leave comments! They're super helpful to me in terms of brain fuel, and I just love hearing what you guys think of the story so far!

See you next update!